Category Archives: Civics

Add Another Woman of Color to SCOTUS, Please

Civics, General, Social Justice, Women, ,

“People ask me sometimes, ‘When do you think it will be enough? When will there be enough women on the court?’ And my answer is when there are nine.”

~ Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, PBS Interview, February 5th, 2015

Imagine that: NINE women on the U.S. Supreme Court!

And why not?

The Supreme Court has been in existence since 1789. That’s 232 years and counting. One hundred ninety-two years passed before President Ronald Reagan nominated the first woman nominee, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981.

Since then, only four women have become U.S. Supreme Court justices.

That is slow-as-molasses progress, don’t you think?

The sex ratio in the United States continues to favor females. In 2010, there were 7.43 million more women, with the difference projected to decrease to 7.42 million by 2025.

Simply put, there are more females than males in America!

Why can’t our nation’s highest court reflect that fact? We’ve had over two and a quarter centuries’ worth of mostly (white) men deciding issues for everyone in America.

Now, President Joe Biden has the privilege of nominating a woman to join SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States). An African American one no less.

‘Bout time!

These politicians whining about Biden being politically correct for making good on his campaign promise to nominate the first Black woman to SCOTUS have convenient amnesia. What they don’t say is that Presidents Reagan and Trump each made a similar promise and nomination during their presidencies.

Here’s a tiny sampling of the cynical, racially-tinged bellyaching out there:

“But which Black woman, exactly? Biden didn’t tell us. Biden didn’t mention the Supreme Court nominee’s legal qualifications or judicial philosophy or ability to perform one of the most important jobs in the country. He didn’t even tell us she was a nice person. All he said was she’s going to be Black and she’s going to be female, because to him, that’s all that matters.

Bridget Floyd would be the obvious choice. She is not a judge or a lawyer or whatever, but in this case, who cares? Clearly, that’s not the point anymore – this law stuff.”

~ Tucker Carlson, Fox News host

“Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog & v smart,”
“Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesn’t fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman. Thank heaven for small favors?” [tweet]

~ Ilya Shapiro, Vice President, Cato Institute, and incoming executive director of Georgetown Law School’s Center for the Constitution

“The fact that he’s willing to make a promise at the outset, that it must be a Black woman, I gotta say that’s offensive. You know, you know Black women are what, 6% of the US population? He’s saying to 94% of Americans, ‘I don’t give a damn about you, you are ineligible’.

And he’s also saying — it’s actually an insult to Black women. If he came and said, ‘I’m gonna put the best jurist on the court and he looked at a number of people and he ended up nominating a Black woman, he could credibly say, ‘OK I’m nominating the person who’s most qualified.’ He’s not even pretending to say that he he’s saying, ‘If you’re a White guy, tough luck. If you’re a White woman, tough luck. You don’t qualify.'”

~ Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)

Oh, boo hoo hoo!

(Note: in 2019, Black women represented 7% of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.)

Black women have too often been dehumanized throughout our history, from the days of slavery to the present day. For example, enslaved women were used for gynecological experiments because of a prevailing perception that Blacks had a higher tolerance for pain – a perception that persists today. African American women and girls are seldom seen as victims and instead seen as deserving of harm or unable to be harmed, a dangerous perception that has perpetuated a long legacy of impunity for violence against them; when abuse occurs, they are less likely to be believed and supported. A report published by Georgetown Law Center found that “adults view Black girls as less innocent and more adult-like than their white peers.” The men mentioned above and their like-minded supporters seem to think Black women have little or no brains. That they can’t possibly be qualified enough to be a judge, let alone a SCOTUS justice.

But of course there are Black women who are qualified! They are part of a very long line of trailblazing women from many fields who continue to contribute to our society. I only included one link about extraordinary African American women under my Sources, but there are countless links to explore!

Those men and their colleagues will say whatever brings in the bucks or votes, of course. Likely appealing to their fan base or voters with more puke-worthy, disgusting comments that reek of racism and misogyny, similar to the ones mentioned above.

Meanwhile, may President Biden choose the best candidate possible. And hopefully, may he get another opportunity to choose another female SCOTUS justice before the next election, maybe even a Chief Justice. That’d be a good bit of progess.

Methinks Justice Ginsberg would have made a good Chief Justice.

Sources

PBS
Wikipedia – Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court
Wikipedia – History of the Supreme Court of the United States
Statistica
Population USA
Salon
Daily Beast
Portside
New York Times
The Guardian
CNN
Business Insider
ACLU
Ohio State University
Huffington Post

New Year’s Wishes

Civics, General

Here’s what I wish for 2022:

• The pandemic ends before 2023. More Americans get their jabs and vaccines become widely available to the poorest around the world.

• The 1/6 Committee pours overwhelming loads of sunshine on the dirty details of the Insurrection and the world to see. Perpetrators (from top to bottom) are held accountable and go down in flames…raked over the coals by the public and held in contempt for generations to come.

• SCOTUS (the Supreme Court of the United States) does NOT overturn Roe v. Wade.

• Extremist right-wing candidates for every government office from the local to federal level so badly scare the living daylights out of voters (and hopefully, some of their own party) that they lose spectacularly in the 2022 midterm elections – especially if they are endorsed by a certain former president.

• Much of America becomes completely disgusted with the Big Lie, regardless of political stripe.

• Democrats find their spine and move aggressively forward on President Biden’s agenda (voting rights acts, Build Back Better, pandemic relief, etc).

Is that too much to wish for?

If I sit here long enough, I’m sure I can think of many more wishes! But there’s a start. We need more sunshine…A LOT more.

Here’s to a happy, healthy, peaceful 2022!

Islamophobia Personified Through Two U.S. Congresswomen

Civics, General, Social Justice, Women, , , ,

Something has been eating at me.

I have been debating in my head the last few weeks whether or not to give space to a couple of Congresswomen whose behavior I find despicable. But after contemplating the fact that I have unhesitatingly called out people who harm (or inspire others to harm) others they don’t like in my blog posts, I thought: oh, why the hell not?!

So here I mention two Congresswomen who I think make Congress look very bad (as if Congress needed any help in that regard), as well as their respective constituents: Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA).

Let’s start with Rep. Boebert. Muslim Advocates reports:

Speaking to constituents over the Thanksgiving holiday, Boebert told a made-up story about being in a Capitol Hill elevator with Omar and telling an approaching Capitol police officer “Well, she [Omar] doesn’t have a backpack, we should be fine.” At another event a few months prior, Boebert told a different version of the story where she called Rep. Omar part of a “Jihad Squad.” She also said that Omar and Tlaib were “black-hearted, evil women.” Boebert subsequently used a phone call with Omar not to apologize publicly but to double down on her hate and call Omar “anti-American” and a “terrorist sympathizer.”

Just reading that makes my tummy turn in disgust.

A September Staten Island Conservative Party dinner event video was uncovered on Tuesday, November 30th by CNN’s Kfile and was shared at the time on Facebook but didn’t make national news. Boebert said,

“One of my I staffers, on his first day with me, got into an elevator in the Capitol. And in that elevator, we were joined by Ilhan Omar,” Boebert said in September. “It was just us three in there and I looked over and I said, well, lookey there, it’s the Jihad Squad. She doesn’t have a backpack, she wasn’t dropping it and running so we’re good.”

She apparently thinks she’s funny?

What kind of person would laugh at that?

As a result of her videos, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) – one of the first two Muslim women in Congress along with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), received a profanity-laden voicemail with racial epithets which she played during a news conference and which she said was among hundreds of such messages she has reported since joining Congress.

In the grainy recording, an unidentified man can be heard saying:

We see you, Muslim sand n***** bitch. We know what you’re up to. You’re all about taking over our country. Don’t worry, there’s plenty that will love the opportunity to take you off the face of this fucking earth. Come get it, you fucking Muslim piece of shit. You jihadist. We know what you are. You’re a fucking traitor. You will not live much longer, bitch, I can almost guarantee you that. We the people are rising up, and you will be tried before a military tribunal, and you will be found guilty.

Boebert initially took steps to ease the situation, according to multiple news sources, apologizing “to anyone in the Muslim community I offended”. But after declining to apologize directly to Omar during a tense phone call on Monday, November 29, which Omar abruptly ended, Boebert again went on the attack. Rep. Omar said the voicemail was left for her after Boebert released another video criticising her.

To my mind, Rep. Boebert is behaving worse than a severely immature teenager. Can you imagine being in school or work and having a bully make sick jokes to anyone who will listen that you are a terrorist?

Who’s the black-hearted woman here?!

In the letter to the Office of Congressional Ethics, Muslim Advocates and Bend the Arc note that not only do Boebert’s anti-Muslim attacks sully the reputation of the House of Representatives, they also invite additional hate and threats against the Muslim members of Congress, their staff and all religious minorities.

“We are deeply disturbed by Rep. Boebert’s abhorrent rhetoric. The death threat [voicemail] shared by Rep. Omar illustrates the danger we face when those in positions of power shamelessly spread politically-charged lies and hate-filled messages,” said Rabbi Jason Kimelman-Block, Washington Director of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action. “We stand in solidarity with our Muslim neighbors, and all targeted communities in denouncing hate speech and calling on our leaders to hold Rep. Boebert accountable.”

She’s not the only one who needs to be held accountable. How about Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA), a.k.a. MTG?

After her fellow GOP Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado shared the fake story with constituents about getting into an elevator with Omar at the Capitol —comparing the Muslim congresswoman to a suicide bomber which resulted in strong backlash and after Boebert issued an apology to the Muslim community (but not to Rep. Omar personally), MTG posted an Islamophobic tweet attacking Representative Ilhan Omar, saying people should “never apologize” to her and the group of progressive lawmakers Greene has dubbed the “Jihad Squad.”

“Democrats want us censored, shut down, and imprisoned. Never apologize to Islamic terrorist sympathizers, communists, or those who fund murder with our tax dollars,” the far-right congresswoman wrote on Twitter.

“@IlhanMN and the Jihad Squad are all three and are undeserving of an apology.”

I take issue with people who refuse to apologize when they have attacked – intentionally or not, another person or group of people because of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs (or none at all), or socio-economic background.

What does MTG care that her fellow Congresswoman has gotten death threats ever since she became a Congresswoman and more recently as a result of Rep. Boebert’s elevator “joke”?

This is a person who repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians — including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry — and FBI agents in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress, as CNN’s KFile previously reported.

This is someone who also:

• Endorsed 9/11 trutherism conspiracies and falsely claimed there was no evidence a plane crashed into the Pentagon, according to reporting from Media Matters.

• In 2018, questioned whether the Parkland shooting that killed 17 people was a planned event and called Parkland survivor and activist David Hogg a “paid actor.” In a recently surfaced video from March 2019, Greene follows Hogg as he walks toward the U.S. Capitol and can be heard making false and baseless claims as she asks him a series of questions related to gun rights and how he was able to meet with senators.

• On and offline, frequently engaged with extreme anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim rhetoric. Some of the targets of her comments included her future colleagues in the House of Representatives, like Tlaib and Omar, and President Barack Obama, who Greene falsely said is Muslim.

And to add to her illustrious infamy, the representative from Georgia on December 20th used her time in the limelight at the Turning Point USA’s “AmericaFest” rally to call out the diversity of the attendees, only to highlight that the event can’t possibly be racist:

“So I’ve never been to one of these events before. And when I walked in yesterday, I was like, ‘What kind of people come here?'” she continued. “So I’m walking around and seeing some good people and I see white people, Black people, brown people, yellow people…

“And then there’s talk of freedom and loving America and conservative principles, some crazy people in here were talking about how much they love this guy named Jesus. And I heard—someone I really like—I think I heard that a lot of people here like a guy named Donald J. Trump.

“And then I said ‘Oh, oh, I know exactly what this is. The Left calls this a white supremacist party,’ Okay, okay, I know what I’m going to now.”

You get the picture.

(Yellow people? C’mon, MTG. It’s the 21st century, not the 19th century. The term “yellow people” stems from “yellow peril,” a racist ideology dating back to the 19th century used to misrepresent people from Asia, painting them as a group to be feared and reduced to something less than white Europeans.)

She spoke of “talk of Freedom and loving America”…I wonder if MTG knows that service by Muslims in the United States military dates back to the American Revolutionary War, where records indicate that there were some Muslims who fought on the revolutionary side? Or that Muslims have fought in all major United States conflicts, including the War of 1812, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War? More recently, they have served in the Gulf War, Iraq War, and the War in Afghanistan.

Those Muslim veterans helped fight for our freedoms – including the freedom of Reps. Boebert and Greene to be insufferable assholes toward their fellow Muslim members of Congress, Muslims in America, and every American who finds Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and racism UN-American and unacceptable.

Rep. MTG apparently doesn’t agree with her fellow Republican Congresswoman Boebert in issuing a public apology to Muslims and holds the dubious distinction of supporting violence against those she disagrees with or simply doesn’t like. She has a long record of conspiracy theory-laden remarks as well as disparaging remarks about people who don’t look like her or share her beliefs.

Yes, this is a person who relies heavily on social media for her news. In a statement, she did not deny that she liked posts and replied to comments but claimed that many people have run her Facebook page.

“Over the years, I’ve had teams of people manage my pages. Many posts have been liked. Many posts have been shared. Some did not represent my views. …”

Rep. MTG, you just let other people say anything on your behalf, is that right?

Geez!

Ok, so enough of the dastardly deeds of these two Congresswomen. I had to unload this weight off of my mind that is their stinking, despicable Islamophobia – rooted in these Congresswomen’s own ignorance – which has appealed to like-minded people’s fears and which has inspired violence toward their fellow Americans who happen to have a different religion than theirs.

These two Congresswomen seem to carry their Islamophobia like a badge of honor. Worse, they don’t give a flying fig that their sentiments have consequences – of inspiring like-minded people to make threats of physical violence, death, or violent verbal harrassment toward Muslim members of Congress.

It’s too bad that that sort of behavior isn’t condemned by the entirety of Congress. Calls to remove them from committees are just a slap on the wrist.

Hey, Congress? Take a lesson in growing a spine from the more than 350 students from Fairfax High School in Virginia: they walked out in protest on Dec. 16 to show their solidarity with a student who was allegedly attacked in an Islamophobic incident.

According to a Change.org petition, a Black Muslim student, identified as Ekran Mohammad, was allegedly harassed by a group of boys, who threw her onto a desk and removed her hijab on Tuesday, December 14, 2021.
.
The Daily Kos reported that

…both the attackers and the victim were reported to have received equal punishment and made to have in-school suspension in the same room, students told NBC News. After expressing that she felt unseen, the victim’s classmates not only came together but marched in protest for her.

“If we don’t feel safe in our environment, in our school, then something has to be done,” Mohammad said.

One student told NBC News that she and her friends were working on a project when a group of students began to harass them. They were “making these Islamophobic jokes, talking about Jewish people and Nazis, creating the Islamic symbol and putting an X across it,” a student identified as Eliza Gill said.

That’s when Mohammad confronted one of the boys and reportedly “lightly shoved him away,” to which he reacted violently.  “[He] threw me across the room. I hit my left side on the desk, and my chest hit the chair,” Mohammad said. He allegedly then removed her hijab.

Unfortunately, not only was Mohammad’s experience allegedly not taken seriously, but suspending her in the same room as her attackers raised questions by students and others alike. Following the incident, Mohammad allegedly spent the evening in the emergency room during which medical reports show contusions and bruises. This evidence was given to the police, WTOP reported.

Investigations into the incident are ongoing, according to a press release issued by the city’s police department. The police department also noted that it was not notified by the school regarding the assault but instead heard about it due to the student rally.

The school officials did not take responsibility in dealing with the incident, much in the same spirit that Congress remains deaf toward Reps. Boebert and Greene in their attacks against their Muslim Congresswomen. You could argue: well, you’re comparing apples and oranges here – Congresswomen and high school students!

Really, are the Congresswomen behaving any better than the students who attacked Ekran Mohammad? Reps. Boebert and MTG are supposed to be adults and represent their constituents. They have greater responsibilities. But they’re spewing Islamophobic rhetoric whenever it’s most convenient with no care that their words may have deadly consequences.

“There’s multiple witnesses who can attest to racist and Islamophobic comments and overtures being made immediately prior to the incident into the assault,” said Abed Ayoub, legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which represents the 16-year-old student.

“It’s the students that brought attention to this, and we need to remember that,” Ayoub said. “We need to empower them and realize the important role they played in standing up for one of their own.”

Hear, hear!

Those 350+ Fairfax High School students in Virginia who walked out in protest to show their solidarity for their fellow student have demonstrated they have far more backbone than much of Congress has toward their fellow members of Congress who are Muslim.

Thank goodness those students are part of our future.


Sources

Muslim Advocates
Yahoo
Newsweek – Marjorie Taylor Greene Attacks Ilhan Omar, ‘Jihad Squad’ After Boebert Apology
HuffPost
The Guardian
Rolling Stone
World Socialist Web Site
CNN
Daily Kos – Rep. Greene uses racist term for Asian Americans while trying to prove conservatives aren’t racist
Wikipedia – Color Terminology for Race
Newsweek – Marjorie Taylor Greene Refers to ‘Yellow People’ in Speech on GOP Diversity
Wikipedia
Daily Kos – Hundreds of Virginia high school students protest after Muslim girl is allegedly attacked at school
WDVM

21st Century-style Bounty Hunting

Civics, Social Justice, Women, , ,

What explains my absence from not posting a blog entry this month so far?

The real answer is procrastination…but it feels better to blame the Texas legislature and Texas Governor for writing and signing the Texas Heartbeat Act (SB 8/HB 1515), which was assigned into law on May 19th, 2021 and became effective on September 1st, 2021.

This law is the first six-week abortion ban in the United States, and the first of its kind to rely on enforcement by private individuals through civil lawsuits, rather than by the government through criminal or civil enforcement. The act establishes a system in which members of the public can sue anyone who performs or facilitates an illegal abortion for a minimum of US$10,000 in statutory damages.

Think bounty hunting. Vigilantes.

Instead of civilians encouraged to hunt for slaves escaping to seek freedom, it will be civilians hunting for anyone who supports women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies – be it physician, clinic, driver who took the pregnant woman to the clinic, etc.

ABC News reports that the Texas law bans abortions after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected, which can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Remember, however, back in June I noted:


Obstetricians say the term “fetal heartbeat” is misleading, and that this scientific misunderstanding, among countless others, may contribute to negative public opinion toward abortion, reports The Cut.

Robyn Schickler, OB/GYN and Physicians for Reproductive Health fellow explained to The Cut that what is detectable at or around six weeks can more accurately be called “cardiac activity. She and others argue that what doctors can detect is essentially communication between a group of what will eventually become cardiac cells.

Jennifer Kerns, an OB/GYN and professor at the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF), added:

These are cells that are programmed with electrical activity, which will eventually control the heart rate — they send a signal telling the heart to contract, once there is a heart.” It is this early activity which ultrasounds detect — not a heartbeat.

Also, the law requires minors have parental consent to obtain an abortion, which may be difficult to come by in cases of incest. Texas minors can get judicial approval to get an abortion without parental consent, but it may not be realistically feasible for a teen to confirm a pregnancy, go through the court system for a judge’s sign-off, and book an abortion appointment within two weeks of a missed period after being raped.

Perhaps the scariest aspect of the bill is that there are no exceptions for cases of rape, sexual abuse, incest, and fetal anomaly diagnoses.

Well, to me anyway, that is not only scary and stupid, but also disrespectful to more than half the population of America.

Oh yes, let’s not forget that five of the six conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court denied the emergency motion filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights on August 30, 2021, seeking to block the Texas Heartbeat Act from going into effect. So I’m a bit pissed at those justices, too.

Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s more liberal members, Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, all wrote or joined dissents. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sotomayor wrote that “presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand”.

Hear, hear, Justice Sotomayor!

This Texas Heartbeat Act business has gotten me tied up in a knot of fury!

I’ve said before that I passionately believe Uncle Sam needs to stay out of every woman’s womb. Who wants the government to interfere with one’s intimately personal affairs? Who wants the government to interfere with a woman’s medical visits with her health provider?

Do YOU want anyone other than yourself telling you when and whether you ought to have offspring?

And if you do not, and you unexpectedly became pregnant, do you want the government and society to force you to carry the pregnancy to term, regardless of YOUR circumstances – in effect, having strangers who know absolutely nothing about you dictate to you what to do with YOUR body?

These politicians who dream up anti-abortion bills to control women’s reproductive choices and the governors who sign said bills into laws in the name of “pro-life” – do they ever imagine what it might be like to have Uncle Sam interfere in THEIR private lives? Could they imagine if someone wanted or needed a vasectomy or an erectile dysfunction medication that he had to jump through invasive, non-medically necessary procedures and interrogations deemed mandatory by medically-ignorant politicans?

And could they imagine if someone decided to seek a procedure because they didn’t want to be a father anymore, there might be a posse of civilians who thought otherwise about his reproductive choice and hunt down anyone (e.g. physician, clinic, driver) who supported this individual – with lawsuits, greenlighted by the state?

Methinks they would neither appreciate nor approve that!

You do notice that the White House, Congress, and state and local legislatures around the country are still predominately comprised of white males to this day, right? They don’t possess a uterus. And I don’t think they have a clue what a woman feels when she’s pregnant, or what she’s endured if she’s been brutally violated – let alone have any clue about menstrual cycles and the myriad reproductive health issues that can occur monthly or during a pregnancy.

So why the hell are politicians making laws governing women’s bodies?

If men were impregnated by a rapist or family member, would they happily accept Uncle Sam and society telling them they HAVE TO carry the pregnancy forward, NO EXCEPTIONS?

Why don’t these anti-choice politicians get off their high holy horse and stop fucking with women’s lives? They scream freedom and independence until it comes to controlling women. They don’t want freedom and independence for women? (or perhaps, only for the women in their families, but not poor and minority women?) Most of them are not doctors! And the few who are and who also endorse regulating women’s reproductive choices…well, they’re beneath comment.

Do these “pro-life” (mostly male) politicians know anything about women’s reproductive health?

Granted, probably a lot of us aren’t wholly familiar with the intricate details of female reproductive health and pregnancy, but the difference between everyday citizens and sanctimonious politicians is that the latter have publicly made morons of themselves by expounding on their “knowledge” of women.

Recall these lovely gems:

“From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist.”

~former Representative Todd Akin (R-MO), on pregnancy caused by rape. August 2012

“It [the new law] doesn’t require that [carrying a rapist’s baby to term] at all, because, obviously, it provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion.”

~Texas Governor Greg Abbott, on being asked why a rape victim would have to carry a pregnancy to term. September 8, 2021

Gestation, as an ABC reporter recently clarified, is measured from a person’s last menstrual period, and ovulation – when a person can become pregnant – occurs about two weeks after that. So the new Texas Heartbeat Act, in reality, gives a person about four weeks after conception — or two weeks after a missed period — to confirm a pregnancy and book an appointment for an abortion within that tight timeframe.

Moreover, some victims of rape or incest are young and may not yet have a full understanding of or familiarity with their menstrual cycles to be able to so quickly identify a pregnancy.

Leave women alone, dammit! It’s their bodies, their lives. Especially leave them alone if you don’t support taxpayer-funded safety net programs to help these women raise their children. Allow me to indulge by reposting the following comment I take to heart:

“I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”

~Sister Joan Chittister, Benedictine nun, 2004

A woman’s body is hers alone. What’s her pregnancy and reproductive choice got to do with your lives, Mr./Ms. Anti-choice politician?

It’s not like pregnancy is a highly transmissible virus and an imminent threat to public health.

Her body, her choice.

Worry about your own morality and look in the mirror first, please, dear elected “pro-life” officials.


Sources

ABC News
CNN
Wikipedia
Planned Parenthood
Huffington Post – Todd Akin on Abortion: Legitimate Rape …
The Cut
NBC News
NPR
The Guardian
PoliticusUSA
Media Matters
Huffington Post – No, Virginia’s Governor Did Not Endorse Killing Babies

When One Congresswoman voted NO to Giving a Blank Check to a Forever War

Civics, General, Women,

Three days after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) cast the lone “no” vote on the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that the House of Represenatatives approved, 420 to 1.

Rep. Lee stood before her House colleagues and pleaded with them not to give President Bush a blank check to wage war against the remote, lawless nation (Afghanistan) accused of harboring the Sept. 11 terrorists.

“Let’s just pause, just for a minute, and think through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control,” she said to them days after the attacks.

One woman. Trying to reason with her colleagues not to decide hastily to give the president a blank check. Death threats and vilification followed for years. But her vote was also widely praised as an act of political courage.

She told the LA Times she has never wavered on her conviction that she was on the right side of history. “No way” she said in an interview when asked if she ever had second thoughts. “I did a lot of thinking about that. I talked to constitutional lawyers about that. I’m a person of faith. I prayed over that. And we’re humans, because we all make mistakes. So that’s the calculated risk whenever you cast a vote that may or may not be the sentiment of the majority. But no.”

She has lobbied for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority to declare war by repealing the military authorization. She has become an antiwar crusader to bring U.S. troops home, pestering each new president to wind down the fighting.

Kudos to Rep. Barbara Lee! But what of her colleagues – her own party members in particular?

Did they really want to give the president a blank check to punish whomever he and his advisors thought were a threat to American national security? If they were on the fence, why didn’t they speak up like Rep. Lee? Were they too wrapped up in emotions as the rest of America likely was? Too blinded by emotions to think straight – at least to give some days’ pause to think things through as Rep. Lee advised?

Or did they know in their hearts she was right but too worried about keeping their seats and potentially the public backlash they’d likely receive? Granted, I imagine it’s much easier to conform under a national crisis. Yet Rep. Lee had the fortitude to speak publicly and vote NO.

We’ll never know; or maybe we the public might discover their real sentiments about that vote after some of those members retire and write a memoir to celebrate themselves.

This of course would be after U.S. lost thousands of lives, a ton of money, and an estimated tens of thousands of Afghan lives lost, ruined, or uprooted.

Specifically, official government data shows the war has cost the U.S. around $1trn. Between the fiscal years of 2002 and 2020, official counts of total military expenditure in Afghanistan by the US Department of Defense totalled $824bn; additionally, spending on reconstruction by various agencies including the state department came to $131bn.

Unofficial estimates, however, suggest the bill is much higher. The Costs of War project by researchers at Brown University in Rhode Island estimates that between 2001 and 2021 the war cost the US $2.26trn. Their estimate includes items in addition to those in the official tallies: the bill for operations in Pakistan, war debt and support supplied to veterans, which are excluded from official tallies.

Although the military evacuation of tens of thousands out of Afghanistan has ended, There is chatter of potentially more military (drone) strikes if safe passage of those still wanting to leave the country is threatened by militants, which would cost still more money and lives.

Regarding the cost of lives lost: on the U.S. side: 2,448 American service members have been killed in Afghanistan as of April 2021, according to data from Linda Bilmes of Harvard University’s Kennedy School and the Brown University Costs of War project, as reported by the Associated Press. An additional 3,846 U.S. contractors also lost their lives.

Oh wait…add 13 more service members from the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K (or IS-K,ISKP, ISK), attack last week.

On the Coalition side – the allies from three dozen countries.who helped the U.S. fight in Afghanistan, there have been an estimated 1,147 deaths (as of May 18, 2020).

And on the Afghan side, according to Wikipedia:

During the War in Afghanistan, over 47,245 civilians, 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan military and police and more than 51,000 Taliban fighters have been killed as of April 2021. Overall the war has killed 171,000 to 174,000 people in Afghanistan. However, the death toll is possibly higher due to unaccounted deaths by “disease, loss of access to food, water, infrastructure, and/or other indirect consequences of the war.”

The Cost of War project estimated that the number who have died through indirect causes related to the war may be as high as 360,000 additional people based on a ratio of indirect to direct deaths in contemporary conflicts.

We can add about 170 more Afghan lives lost as of Thursday, August 26th, 2021, thanks to Isis-k, according to local Afghan health officials. Plus two Isis-k members, and nine members of a family – including six children, thanks to a drone strike by the United States on Sunday, August 29th.

Are there more? Even at this late stage of the war, I’ve had to make a bit of an effort to scroll the news to find the 170 figure; U.S. media mostly mentions only American lives lost in any U.S.-involved conflict, and rarely mentions lives lost on the other side — unless it’s the enemy, and less often, civilians. If foreign lives lost are mentioned at all, it’s just a blip way down in the article. If you want to find out about Afghan lives lost, you might have to turn to independent media or sources outside the U.S.; that’s been my reading experience, anyway.

At least some members of Congress seem to have regrown a bit of their spines back: on June 17th, 2021, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), a significant step to reassert congressional control over the executive branch’s military powers. But the vote does little to reduce the actual authority amassed by the White House over the past 20 years to use force all around the world.

That’s because a far more consequential piece of legislation, the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which was passed just after the September 11 attacks, remains in place. Though the 2002 AUMF relates to the use of force in Iraq and has been rarely invoked in recent years, the 2001 law is the legal backbone for U.S. military action against what are deemed to be terrorist entities or threats in any country.

While Congress has not previously had an appetite to check the White House’s post-9/11 war powers, this bill to repeal the 2002 AUMF has been noted by many political observers as a potentially important shift in thinking. This bill to repeal the 2002 AUMF was introduced by none other than Rep. Barbara Lee. The bill, H.R. 256 secured 49 Republicans among its 268 votes to pass. The measure has also gotten the support of President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

And on August 4th, 2021, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted voted 18-14 to repeal both the 1991 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) with supporters saying it was long past time for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority to declare war. (no kidding?!)

The repeal action now moves to the full Senate for its expected approval, a decided change in sentiment from decades since the twin military campaigns in Iraq.

A little progress is better than no progress at all, yes?

Here’s a glimmer of hope: in mid-July, a bipartisan and ideologically diverse group of senators proposed a new bill that, if passed, would dramatically shift the relative amount of power the president and Congress have over U.S. military operations. The new bill sets out a clear definition of which military activities need to be reported to Congress and how quickly. This is especially important given the ambiguities – such as loopholes in the 1973 War Powers Resolution which attempted to constrain presidential power after the disasters of the Vietnam War – that prior administrations (and the present one) have exploited since then.

With the leadership and persistence of Rep. Barbara Lee, support from like-minded colleagues, and public sentiment against forever wars, perhaps we’ll see a bit more responsible behavior from our elected officials? Like repealing the 2001 AUMF and not giving a blank check to the president to wreak destruction around the world in our names?

I leave you with words from one of my favorite journalists:

The Taliban’s takeover of Kabul is being likened by many to the fall of Saigon. Before the Afghanistan War, there was the Vietnam War. And there were many other wars during and before Vietnam and Afghanistan that garnered less attention.

If there is a lesson that Americans as a nation ought to take away from these devastating militaristic exercises that consistently do more harm than good, it is to ensure we never again rally behind a desire to bomb, raid, occupy and militarily strike another nation.

This means standing up to the liberal and conservative establishments that find a detached comfort in the cold calculus of warfare with no concern for life, safety, or democracy.

~ Sonali Kolkatar, 8/19/21 Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal has many critics — but most are missing the point

Sources

Los Angeles Times
MSN
The Cut
BBC
New Statesman
The Conversation
Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs – Brown University
The Intercept
UPI
Congress.gov – H.R. 256
ABC
Newsweek
NY Mag
Wikipedia – Coalition casualties in Afghanistan
Wikipedia – Civilian casualties in the war in Afghanistan (2001–2021)
Reuters
Alternet
The Independent

Absurdity on Steroids

Civics, General, ,

I have a long-standing issue with people who choose to cast aspersions on childless couples, as if not having children was a defective character trait of some sort. Questions people might ask are: Why doesn’t Mr./Ms. XYZ have children? Are they having problems? Don’t they want any?

Of course, “they” can be easily interchanged with “you”, if you happen to be the target of interrogation about your reproductive status.

As someone who is childless, I’m embarrassed to confess I’ve harbored such thoughts about other childless couples because it’s none of my business any more than it is someone else’s business when they ask me why didn’t I and my spouse have any kids. Those comments are rooted in ignorance and intentionally or not, can feel like you are conveying that you think someone is lacking in something if they aren’t a parent.

(And if you were to argue, “Oh noooo! I never meant that!”, then why the hell did you ask about someone’s child status – or lack thereof, in the first place?)

There’s a multitude of reasons why a couple is childless and often, the reasons are deeply personal and excruciatingly painful to bear. And sometimes not: some people simply don’t want children. In any case, it’s nobody’s damn business. Ever.

Unfortunately, some people want to make it their business, be it family members, friends, or strangers, with expressions of pity (highly unwanted and unwarranted), shame, or outright judgement. Or all of the above. To my mind, this is an insidious, societal malady – judging people’s worth based on whether or not they have children.

I imagine this has been going on for millenia and still does, around the world – including here in the United States.

Casting aspersions on those who aren’t parents by a political candidate or politician is particularly galling and potentially dangerous. (I’ll get to the dangerous part in a bit).

Case in point: last weekend, J.D. Vance, a U.S. Senate candidate from Ohio, called out the “childless left” whom he said have “no physical commitment to the future of this country” in a fiery speech given to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s conference on the Future of American Political Economy.

He seemed to be aiming at certain politicians he dislikes: he specifically named Vice President Kamala Harris, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, citing them as the childless future leaders of the Democratic Party.

“Why is this just a normal fact of …  life, for the leaders of our country to be people who don’t have a personal and direct stake in it via their own offspring?” Vance asked.

Why do you ask such a question, Mr. Vance? What’s not “normal” for you, is perfectly fine for others. A non-issue.

He cynically attacked some Democrats’ suggestion that voting rights be given to 16-year -olds by saying:

“Let’s do this instead. Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of the children.” He continued, asking, “Doesn’t this mean that nonparents don’t have as much of a voice as parents? Doesn’t this mean that parents get a bigger say in how democracy functions?”

Vance was offering a counterproposal: instead of offering the vote to 16-year-olds, increase the voting power of parents by multiplying their vote by the number of children they have.

Never mind that there are likely childless Republican couples who exist in the USA – the fact that this Senate candidate bothered to attack childless couples is despicable. And they ought not to have the right vote because of not having children?!

What a fucking moron!

Childless couples and couples with children alike pay taxes. Property taxes. School taxes. Taxes that go toward infrastructure. Taxes to support social safety nets for FAMILIES. Federal, state, and local taxes…etc, etc. If they’re paying taxes, then they have the right to vote.

Vance said childless Americans have “no physical commitment to the future of this country”. What’s he going to suggest next: that childless adults are not Americans?

He said,

“We should worry that in America, family formation, our birth rates, a ton of indicators of family health have collapsed,” the candidate said, highlighting the severity of America’s ongoing fertility crisis and calling it a “civilizational crisis.”

I don’t appreciate that he is valuing a person’s worth based on their ability to reproduce, as if the only value a woman has is if she’s a baby vessel and the man is a sperm bank.

Welcome back to the Dark Ages!

This guy, J.D. Vance, wrote a memoir called Hillbilly Elegy, which I read with my local library’s book discussion group. It was okay, I think. I don’t remember it well – it didn’t stick in my mind for days afterwards as some good memoirs do…and I’ve read many memoirs in my lifetime. I DO remember most readers in our group weren’t terribly impressed with his memoir. That’s not telling you much about his book, is it? Just my personal opinion of course! (Otherwise, I would be gushing over it…which I’m not.)

Now the creepy, potentially dangerous part:

Since Mr. Vance spewed out his anti-childless poison, the folks over at Fox & Friends decided it would be cool to take his proposal a step further by promoting the idea that “childless” Americans should not be allowed to participate in society by voting. Hey, they thought it wasn’t such a bad idea! They said it was an interesting idea.

Host Will Cain said. “I think it’s an interesting idea. I’m into interesting ideas. Let’s think about it. Let’s talk about it. He’s saying childless leaders are making decisions that are short-term in mind, not focused on the long-term future health of this country because they don’t have a stake in the game. Parents have a stake in the game, they have children so give parents a bigger say.”

FOX News has a scary-large number of viewers, in the millions, I believe. What a nice way to plant into their viewers’ minds the idea that people who don’t have children are of less value as human beings – as people who apparently lack character for not propagating the population, not least of all during a pandemic and a worsening climate change crisis. And therefore ought not have the right to vote.

Does J.D. Vance and the folks at Fox and Friends have any friends and relations who don’t have children for whatever reason? If so, would they gladly tell them that they think childless couples have “no physical commitment to the future of this country” and therefore, should NOT vote?

I can only fervently hope this SICK and dangerous idea of Mr. Vance’s doesn’t spread like wildfire and become entrenched as “mainstream” conservative thinking, let alone become the impetus for one more disgusting voter suppression bill.

Women and men are so much more than a baby vessel or sperm bank and have participated and contributed to the good of America since way before anyone alive today can remember, with child or without child. You need only remember the decades-long battle that women fought for women’s suffrage; the marches for civil rights for EVERYONE that continue today; and the advances in science and medicine that conquer cancer and face down a pandemic. Among many other scientific wonders.

Was a person’s status as a parent or not truly the central focus of any of those battles to move humanity forward? I don’t think so! You get the idea.

Let’s keep it that way.

Sources

The Federalist
Salon

Dumbing Down America: Outlawing Critical Race Theory

Civics, General, Social Justice,

I’ve been feeling rather hot lately, both literally and figuratively.

Literally, I am feeling too hot and sweaty because it’s just blazing hot outdoors. Figuratively, I am hot because certain people want to dumb down America’s future generations by creating laws to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT).

What is CRT you ask?

Critical race theory is a field of intellectual inquiry that demonstrates the legal codification of racism in America.

Through the study of law and U.S. history, it attempts to reveal how racial oppression shaped the legal fabric of the U.S. Critical race theory is traditionally less concerned with how racism manifests itself in interactions with individuals and more concerned with how racism has been, and is, codified into the law.

CRT recognizes that racism is not a bygone relic of the past. Instead, it acknowledges that the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship on Black Americans and other people of color continue to permeate the social fabric of this nation. 

So far, Tennessee, Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Florida have passed laws to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory. And state legislators in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia have introduced legislation banning what they believe to be critical race theory from schools. Apparently, these states’ legislators are highly sensitive about teachers asking young people to consider how systemic racism has impacted the fabric of our society.

These laws push back against the heightened awareness of the nation’s history of racial injustice in the wake of the popularity of the 1619 Project and last summer’s massive protests over the murder of George Floyd.

The 1619 Project, is a long-form journalism project developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, writers from The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine which “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States’ national narrative”. The project was first published in The New York Times Magazine in August 2019 for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the English colony of Virginia.

Here are sections from identical legislation in Oklahoma and Tennessee that propose to ban the teaching of the legislators’ imagined conception of CRT:

(1) One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;

(2) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously;

(3) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of the individual’s race or sex;

(4) An individual’s moral character is determined by the individual’s race or sex;

(5) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;

(6) An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.

David Miguel Gray, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis asserts that as a philosopher of race and racism, he can safely say that Critical Race Theory does not assert the aforementioned concepts:

“What most of these bills go on to do is limit the presentation of educational materials that suggest that Americans do not live in a meritocracy, that foundational elements of U.S. laws are racist, and that racism is a perpetual struggle from which America has not escaped.”

Take a look at number 6:

An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.

Is there some sort of projection going on here?! Who in their right mind would dream up a concept that children should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex?

WHO is really experiencing discomfort and psychological distress here?!

Fragile politicians who’d rather sweep ugly history under the rug and who don’t want their children and grandchildren to feel the same as they do, I think. (Or not-necessarily-fragile politicians who just want to be re-elected and who don’t want to hear from constituents who might be fragile.) Fugeddabout slaves, generations of brutal injustices and discrimination, eh?! Systemic racism – it is what it is, ok? Let’s move on. Tough shit!

To my mind, these legislators appear to want to pretend racial injustice isn’t real (especially if they’ve never been affected by it). They seek to diminish or erase Critical Race Theory as if racial injustice is a thing of the past, or worse, doesn’t exist – the way they do with the Insurrection of 1/6.

Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor and central figure in the development of critical race theory, said in a recent interview that critical race theory “just says, let’s pay attention to what has happened in this country, and how what has happened in this country is continuing to create differential outcomes. … Critical Race Theory … is more patriotic than those who are opposed to it because … we believe in the promises of equality. And we know we can’t get there if we can’t confront and talk honestly about inequality.”

As someone who has always loved history and appreciates people like Kimberlé Crenshaw who dig into the past and critically analyze it to understand our present, I wholeheartedly share her sentiments.

Why limit students’ exposure to the history of racial oppression? These state legislators may be okay with suppressing information and creating amnesia on certain matters, but I certainly am not okay with their actions! I’m not into dumbing down American citizens. Especially young American citizens.

Sources

The Conversation
Alternet.org
Wikipedia
American Bar Association

Happy July 4th?

Civics, General, Social Justice,

The United States’ Independence Day is here, but I feel cautious about it.

Why?

Because in less than a year, we’ve had a presidential election which the losing former president continues to rant and rave about as a stolen election – and what everyone else except his followers regard as The Big Lie; we’ve witnessed the 2020 election followed by string of failed court cases to contest the election as well as ongoing bogus “audits” of multiple states’ ballots; we’ve survived a horrific insurrection on United States committed by followers of the former Dear Leader – incited by no less than him.

And according to the Brennan Center for Justice, state lawmakers have enacted nearly 30 laws since the 2020 election that restrict ballot access, according to their new tally as of June 21st.

More than half of these new laws make it harder to vote absentee and by mail, after a record number of Americans voted by mail in November.

The Brennan Center for Justice reports that by May 14, 2021, legislators introduced 389 bills with restrictive provisions in 48 states. Twenty-two bills with restrictive provisions have already been enacted. In addition, at least 61 bills with restrictive provisions in 18 states are moving through legislatures: 31 have passed at least one chamber, while another 30 have had some sort of committee action (e.g., a hearing, an amendment, or a committee vote).

Morever, on July 1st, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld voting restrictions in Arizona and signaled that challenges to new state laws making it harder to vote would face a hostile reception from a majority of the justices.

On a brighter note, the next day, July 2nd, the New Hampshire Supreme Court struck down a 2017 state law crafted by Republicans that implemented new requirements for same-day voter registration that critics say made it more difficult for college students to vote.

In a unanimous 4-0 decision, the state Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling from last year that found the law, known as Senate Bill 3, violated New Hampshire’s constitution “because it unreasonably burdens the right to vote.”

The state Supreme Court said that the law “must be stricken in its entirety.”

Yippee!

Yet Georgia and Texas have already passed severely restrictive laws, some of which I discussed in detail in my March 1st post. I think it’s worth pointing out again that multiple news sources report that various state lawmakers have argued that these restrictive measures are necessary because, “the public has lost confidence in our election system,” but they refuse to acknowledge the reason some voters believe elections are unfair. However, some of those same legislators spent months spreading disinformation about the integrity of the 2020 election.

I think it would be exquisite justice if these hundreds of laws boomerang back to these lawmakers in the fashion that New Hampshire’ Senate Bill 3 was by the state’s Supreme Court: “must be stricken in its entirety”. Even more so, if the public said “enough!” via the ballot box and sent these lawmakers home.

Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats had better use its majority power to pass the For The People Act, H.R.1/S.1, which sets national minimum standards for our elections based on bipartisan best practices, ensuring that Americans’ ability to access the ballot isn’t dependent on which state they live in. The Act also aims to set up automatic voter registration, expand early voting, ensure more transparency in political donations and limit partisan drawing of congressional districts, among other provisions.

It apparently is something too toxic for the GOP, as demonstrated recently: they filibustered a vote in the Senate to start debate on it, in June. They didn’t even want to talk about it! Cowards.

Congressional Democrats must do the same for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, H.R. 4. which would revitalize the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to defend against racial discrimination in our elections.

And the president must not leave office without having signed these bills. I requested that of him in a letter I sent by post this week.

When those bills are passed and President Biden signs them, THAT will definitely be something to celebrate!

Pooh on the naysayers and cynics! They can take a take a trip to the nearest toxic waste dump and deposit their poison there. Or go move to the country of their favorite authoritarian regime, since they seem to despise democracy so much with their willful and deafening silence on the 1/6 Insurrection and their stifling, voting rights laws.

Who in their right mind would want to celebrate that?

Sources

The New York Times
The Texas Tribune
CNN
Brennan Center for Justice at New York University
Wikipedia – Voter Suppression
CNBC
Campaign Legal Center – The Bipartisan Origins &Impact of the For the People Act (H.R. 1/S 1)
Campaign Legal Center
Human Rights Campaign

Happy, Happy Juneteenth National Independence Day!

Civics, General, Social Justice, Women,

Can you believe it: Juneteenth (June 19th) – is finally a national holiday – a nationwide holiday commemorating the end of slavery?! Yay! Officially it is called Juneteenth National Independence Day and historically known as Jubilee Day, Black Independence Day, and Emancipation Day.

On Thursday, June 17th, 2021, President Joe Biden signed a bill that was passed by Congress to set aside Juneteenth, or June 19th, as a federal holiday. “I hope this is the beginning of a change in the way we deal with one another,” he said.

The Senate approved the bill unanimously; however, 14 House Republicans — many representing states that were part of the slave-holding Confederacy in the 19th century — opposed the measure. Fourteen white male Republicans.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states (that had seceded from the United States) “are, and henceforward shall be free” on January 1st,1863, it could not be enforced in many places until after the end of the Civil War in 1865. Places like Galveston, Texas, where slaves didn’t get word of their official emanicpation until a certain Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger and his troops arrived at Galveston on June 19, 1865, with news that the war had ended and proclaiming freedom for slaves in Texas. That was more than two months after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia.

The following year, the now-free people started celebrating Juneteenth in Galveston. Its observance has continued around the nation and the world since. It is celebrated with concerts, parades and readings of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Now the rest of America has (officially) caught up. ‘Bout time!

Well, 14 House Republicans might still be living in the 19th century. Why didn’t they support the bill to make Juneteenth a national holiday?

Here’s a sampling of their mindset:

“We have enough federal holidays right now. I just don’t see the reason in doing it,” he said. “I don’t think it rises to the level I’m going to support it.”
– Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas

“Let’s call an ace an ace. This is an effort by the Left to create a day out of whole cloth to celebrate identity politics as part of its larger efforts to make Critical Race Theory the reigning ideology of our country. Since I believe in treating everyone equally, regardless of race, and that we should be focused on what unites us rather than our differences, I will vote no.”
– Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Montana

“I don’t believe it’s healthy to reach into the dead past, revive its most malevolent conflicts and reintroduce them into our age,”
– Rep. Tom McClintock, R-California

“Juneteenth should be commemorated as the expression of the realization of the end of slavery in the United States – and I commend those who worked for its passage. I could not vote for this bill, however, because the holiday should not be called ‘Juneteenth National Independence Day’ but rather, ‘Juneteenth National Emancipation (or Freedom or otherwise) Day.’  This name needlessly divides our nation on a matter that should instead bring us together by creating a separate Independence Day based on the color of one’s skin.”
– Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas

And Tom Tiffany, R-Wisconsin, told a tv station that House Democrats had “used their majority to balkanize our country and fuel separatism by creating a race-based ‘Independence Day.’”

Oh, for fuck’s sake! Get over your yourselves!

Race-based ‘Independence Day’?! No comment.

“We have enough federal holidays” – how much is too much, Rep. Jackson? How does Juneteenth not rise to your level, sir? WHAT is your level? Celebrating the end of slavery in America isn’t worth having an official day to remember?

“It’s not healthy to reach into the dead past”, Rep. McClintock? Is it healthier to keep your mind narrow and closed? Is it healthier to sweep the ugly and painful aspects of our history under the rug than to address and acknowledge past wrongs?

This isn’t about YOU.

Pooh on you!

You could learn a thing or two from Ms. Opal Lee, the 94-year-old activist from Fort Worth, Texas, who is oft-referred to as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth”. At age 89, Lee was determined to walk 1,400 miles from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington D.C. in an effort to create the holiday (she logged 300 miles) and spent years focused on this effort. She told a story to an online audience hosted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, that highlighted how far the nation has come, even as recent months have illustrated how far it still has to go on rights and inclusion.

When she was a child growing up in Texas – a week after nine-year-old Lee moved with her family to an all-White neighborhood – an all-white mob of about 500 surrounded the house, prompting her mother to send Lee to stay with friends. When her father showed up with a gun to protect his home, a local police officer said, in Lee’s telling to the online audience, “If you bust a cap, we’ll let the mob have you.”

Her parents slipped away when it got dark, and the mob tore the house apart and burned it, she said.

The date of the attack was Juneteenth.

“If those people had allowed us to stay in that community, they would have found that we were just like them. All we wanted was a decent place to stay, and my father had a job. My mom was working two,” said Lee. “That was all we wanted. We would have been good neighbors, but they didn’t give us the opportunity to show them that.”

Do those 14 people who voted NO on the bill to make Juneteenth a national holiday even have the slightest clue of the hate and pain that Opal Lee and her family had to endure for decades? Do they give a rat’s ass?

Ms. Lee’s determination and passion to make Juneteenth a holiday is incredibly inspiring to me and so many others. As a former educator whose job involved social work, Lee now strives to ensure future generations know about Juneteenth. She authored a children’s book entitled, “Juneteenth: A Children’s Story” (which I just now learned as I am writing and researching this post).

Lee told her online audience that what’s important is to continue to seek equality and push back when fairness and equality are denied, as with the recent spate of legislation to restrict voting rights and bar some public school teaching on racism:

“We are going to soldier on. We are not going to let those kinds of things stop us from getting over to our children what they need to know.”

Days before she witnessed Congress pass a bill to make Juneteenth a nationwide holiday commemorating the end of slavery, she told CNN:

“I’m not just going to sit and rock, you know?”

Hear hear!

Sources

PBS
CNBC
National Archives
Wikipedia – Emancipation Proclamation
Crosscut
Mvorganizing.org
NPR
USA Today – Juneteenth 2021 celebrations: What to know about the holiday
Wikipedia – Juneteenth
CNN
The Harvard Gazette
MSN
USA Today – Who are the 14 House Republicans who voted against a Juneteenth holiday? And why?
The New York Times

Get the Hell OUT of Women’s Wombs, Uncle Sam

Civics, General, Women,

This headline caught my attention the other day:

Texas high school valedictorian scraps approved speech — and speaks out on new anti-abortion law

On May 30th, 2021, at Lake Highlands High School’s graduation in Dallas, TX, Paxton Smith scrapped her valedictory address – which had been approved by school officials – and told her audience it felt wrong to her “to talk about anything but what is currently affecting me and millions of other women in this state.”

She said:

I have dreams, hopes, and ambitions. Every girl here does. We have spent our whole lives working towards our futures, and without our consent or input, our control over our futures has been stripped away from us. I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail me, that if I’m raped, then my hopes and efforts and dreams for myself will no longer be relevant. I hope you can feel how gut-wrenching it is, how dehumanizing it is, to have the autonomy over your own body taken from you.”

WOW!

Ms. Smith has got guts. And a strong sense of self-confidence, to scrap her school official-approved speech and instead speak publicly and passionately about women’s reproductive health and how the new anti-abortion law signed by her governor could affect her and millions of other women.

The Texas law – one of the nation’s strictist abortion measures – outlaws ending a pregnancy as early as six weeks, before many women are even aware they are pregnant, and after a “fetal heartbeat” has been detected. It includes cases where the woman was impregnated as a result of rape or incest. There is an exception for medical emergencies.

Similar “heartbeat” bills have been passed by other states and held up by the courts, but Texas’ version has a twist, notes the Texas Tribune.

Instead of having the government enforce the law, the bill turns the reins over to private citizens — who are newly empowered to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps someone get an abortion after a fetal heartbeat has been detected. The person would not have to be connected to someone who had an abortion or to a provider to sue.

WTF?!

It is yet another so-called “fetal heartbeat” measure, which medical experts say is a scientifically misleading phrase. Why?

Because pulsing cells can be detected in embryos as early as six weeks, this rhythm — detected by a doctor, via ultrasound — cannot be called a “heartbeat,” because embryos don’t have hearts.

Obstetricians say the term “fetal heartbeat” is misleading, and that this scientific misunderstanding, among countless others, may contribute to negative public opinion toward abortion, reports The Cut.

Robyn Schickler, OB/GYN and Physicians for Reproductive Health fellow explained to The Cut that what is detectable at or around six weeks can more accurately be called “cardiac activity”. She and others argue that what doctors can detect is essentially communication between a group of what will eventually become cardiac cells.

Jennifer Kerns, an OB/GYN and professor at the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF), added:

These are cells that are programmed with electrical activity, which will eventually control the heart rate — they send a signal telling the heart to contract, once there is a heart. It is this early activity which ultrasounds detect — not a heartbeat.

Electrical activity from a cluster of pulsing CELLS. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, you anti-choice, anti-science lawmakers!

Nationally, according to a report the Planned Parenthood Federation of America released in March 2021, legislation limiting abortion in 2021 has skyrocketed in comparison to a similar time frame in 2019. Compared to bills introduced from January through mid-March 2019, medication abortion restrictions and bans have tripled to 33, anti-abortion constitutional amendments have tripled to 14. Compared to just one abortion restriction enacted by this point in 2019, 12 have been enacted so far this year by states.

Overall, state legislatures have introduced 516 abortion restrictions, compared to 304 by mid-March 2019.

Why are politicians so hell-bent on policing women’s bodies?

Mr. or Ms. Politician, you’re not being “pro-life” when you consider only the fetus, not giving a flying fig about a pregnant woman’s life and moreover cutting social safety net services like SNAP and Medicaid. You’re just reducing the woman to a mere baby vessel. “Pro-birth” is more accurate, I think.

Would you, Mr. or Ms. Politician, savor the idea of having the government intrude on your private doctor visits? Of course not! Only if it involves someone else, right? (like someone female, and especially someone female and a minority?) You like government so small it can fit into a woman’s womb?

Get the hell OUT of my and other women’s wombs. You don’t belong there. What’s next? A government minder in the room during an exam of your wife/mother/sister/friend because you don’t trust the women in your life or her doctor?

How would you feel if politicians wanted to intrude on you or your husband/father/brother/friend’s doctor-patient relationship in some way – such as a law dictating a doctor had to report to the state when a man has a vasectomy – including reporting if the man refused to do so if forced by the state; and also a law wherein a doctor has to report each time a patient is prescribed erectile dysfunction medication or testoserone and testosterone-enhancing drugs? Or a law rebooted from the not-too-distant-past that essentially says you need sterilization because of who you are, e.g., a minority, a low-income earner, someone with a criminal record, etc.?

Would you not dread the state knowing about your or your loved one’s junk business?

Politicians wouldn’t care at all about your junk or that of the men in your family any more than they care about pregnant women’s lives, regardless of their circumstances. Privacy and respect be damned! You’re just another sperm bank or baby vessel who needs oversight from unseen, holier-than-thou lawmakers who don’t trust you to think for yourself, let alone believe you deserve the freedom to have bodily autonomy!

I hope millions upon millions of women will take inspiration from young Paxton Smith and mobilize against these intrusive, restrictive, and dehumanizing laws against women.

I hope that her generation will become an undeniable force to be reckoned with in making these sorts of laws completely unacceptable, disgusting, and horrific to society – making anti-choice measures ancient history – a notion dreamed up by barbarian minds consumed with controlling women’s bodies and their lives.

And I fervently hope that Ms. Smith’s generation – of all genders – will be the one that permanently and legally enables all women – here in the USA and around the globe, to live freely without fear of government interference into their private health matters forevermore. That would be an incredible achievement to materialize in my lifetime.

I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.

~Sister Joan Chittister, Benedictine nun, 2004

Sources

Alternet
Common Dreams
HuffPost
Popsugar
Berkeley Political Review
ThoughtCo.
Mic.com
PBS
Texas Tribune
NPR
Planned Parenthood
Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF)
The Cut
Wired